Minor Scales –
Musical Scales with Many Variations!

Minor Scales are musical scales that are slightly more difficult than their close relatives – Major Scales – because they require more concentration and we also need to know which type of minor scales (there are 3 main types!) we are singing in order to know which notes to sing!

I will be touching on the various types of these scales and their structures as we go along.

Now, Minor Scales are also made up of 8 notes, just like Major Scales, but when we notate the solfege for these scales, we usually begin with a 6 (La) note instead of a 1 (Doh) note for major scales. Here is the solfege for a Natural Minor Progression:

6 (Low La) 7 (Low Ti) 1 (Doh) 2 (Re) 3 (Mi) 4 (Fa) 5 (Sol) 6 (La)

The minor solfege above becomes an A Minor (natural minor) if we were to treat the 6 (La) note as an ‘A’ note on the piano:

Low A, Low B, C, D, E, F, G, A

There are also many other minor keys from which we can construct these wonderful scales, and here is a list for those piano players out there to refer to:

Just like what you have practised with the major scales, you should sing along as you play these minor scales, and these musical scales would become useful pitching exercises to keep ourselves singing in pitch every time!

Be sure to sing the 1st note of each scale accurately before you actually proceed with the rest of the scale, so as to ensure that the rest of your pitches are correct too! For each scale that i have uploaded, the 1st note of the scale is sounded for a few seconds first, before the entire scale is played, so that you would be able to catch the 1st note of the scale accurately before singing the rest of the pitches!

For those who are interested in Minor Scales and how the 3 main types of these musical scales differ from each other, here are some diagrams that we can refer to in order to understand more about this topic:

Referring to the diagram above for the Natural Minor, we can see that the basic structure for this scale is as follows:

Tone, Semitone, Tone, Tone, Semitone, Tone, Tone

This means that we can construct any natural scale in any minor key, starting on any note we wish, as long as we follow this basic structure! For example, if we were to construct a Natural Minor in a C key, we would have the following notes:

For those who do not know, or who have not read up the section on Major Scales, a Tone (Whole Step) is actually 2 Semitones (Half-Step), and a Semitone means a step to the immediate note to the left or right of the current note, for example, from E to F, or from C to C#.

The Harmonic Minor Scale is different from the Natural Minor in the sense that the 7th note of the scale is raised by 1 semitone. For example, an ‘A’ Natural Minor has a ‘G’ note for its 7th note, whereas an ‘A’ Harmonic Minor has a ‘G#’ note for its 7th note. If we were to refer to the diagram above, we will be able to see that the distance between the 6th note and the 7th note of the scale is a tone and a half.

Referring to the diagram above, the Melodic Minor Scale varies from the Natural and Harmonic Minors by raising its 6th and 7th note by one semitone each whenever we were to sing or play it in an ascending manner, from the lowest note of the scale to its highest note.

This would mean that for an ‘A’ Melodic Minor, the 6th note would be F# and the 7th note would be G#, as opposed to an ‘A’ Natural Minor, where the 6th and 7th notes are F and G respectively.

However, when we were to sing or play the Melodic Minor in a descending manner, from the highest note of the scale to its lowest note, the notes to play would be the same as a Natural Minor on a descent. This is a special feature of the Melodic Minor, in the sense that the notes played when ascending or descending the scale are different!

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